T-Mobile appears to have another trick up its sleeve this week.
The Un-carrier on Wednesday sent out notice that a conference call on an unspecified topic will be held first thing tomorrow morning.
By T-Mobile standards, the announcement was curt, noting only that the call with executives would take place and providing dial-in information. Even T-Mobile CEO John Legere, who is known to drop hints about upcoming Un-carrier news on Twitter, was uncharacteristically silent on the matter as of 1 p.m. ET.
Though the subject of the call remains a mystery, the timing of it coincides with resurfacing rumors about a potential merger with Sprint.
Bloomberg on Wednesday afternoon reported SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is holding out hope for a deal combining its Sprint progeny with T-Mobile.
The merger idea was first floated in 2014, but was killed when the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice signaled they would oppose such a deal. Bloomberg sources said Son has his eye on who will be the next head of the FCC should Tom Wheeler decide to step down at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term. If the new head appears to be more disposed to support a merger, Son may give it a second try, Bloomberg said.
But Son isn’t the only one interested in T-Mobile.
Last summer, reports surfaced T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom (DT) was in on-going talks with both Dish Network and Comcast about a possible sale of the U.S. wireless carrier.
A Dish-T-Mobile deal would give Dish a means to deploy is wireless broadband spectrum and it would give T-Mobile access to more capacity via that spectrum. But a Comcast-T-Mobile deal would give Comcast, the largest cable/broadband operator in the United States, the ability to bundle wireless and offer a quadruple play a la AT&T’s DirecTV offerings.
If tomorrow’s news does turn out to be a merger deal of any kind, it will come as a surprise.
DT in March reportedly pressed pause on its plans to sell T-Mobile U.S. in light of the incentive auction.